Natural Beauty

Emma Watson will strip down to raise environmental awareness, even though she won't do it for the "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" star tweeted her support for James Houston's book of celebrities posing nude to raise environmental awareness. The book's proceeds will go to Global Green USA, a nonprofit focused on sustainability. PHOTOS: Hermione Granger through the years "My friend is supporting GlobalGreenUSA with his book Natural Beauty.

MOUNTAIN PINE RIDGE FOREST RESERVE, Belize - As Hummingbird Highway carves away from Belize's resort-laden sands, pavement dissolves into rutted dirt tracks and the dense jungle canopy starts to press in from all sides. The tallest buildings pushing through the foliage are Maya ruins, and howler monkeys and macaws lurk in the ceiba trees. Late at night, distant thunderstorms ring the horizon, broad sheets of lightning illuminating the mountains. Before I brought my family to Belize for 10 days last summer, I packed a copy of "Heart of Darkness," knowing that although traveling through Central America wouldn't precisely parallel a trip up the Congo River, Joseph Conrad's novel would remind me that the book was the indirect inspiration for our itinerary.

U.S. Figure Skating champion Ashley Wagner is headed to the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, in February. She's excited about that -- and also excited that she's just been named CoverGirl's latest, well, CoverGirl. Wagner, 22, grew up as an "Army brat," living in Germany, Alaska, California and New York. We met recently to discuss her accolades and style. Congratulations on your U.S. championship and on being a new CoverGirl. Thank you. This is such a dream come true.

"When the Whales Came" (at the AMC Century 14 and Beverly Center Cineplex) takes us to Britain's idyllic Isles of Scilly, where life seems unchanged through the centuries. The year, however, is 1914, and not even the beautiful island of Bryher remains untouched by the advent of the Great War. It is a time when parents start wondering, apparently for the first time, whether there really is a future for their children in a locale so remote from the modern world.

Visitors to Point Lobos State Reserve experience a strange metamorphosis when venturing onto the low-lying headland at Sea Lion Point. They seem dazed, as if trying to find their bearings after having been transported to another planet. Wind, over millions of years, has sculpted the jutting conglomerate of rock into a barren moonscape. Gargantuan waves pound it relentlessly, forcing white cascades high overhead and turning the water around it into a swooshing froth.

September 30, 1990 | MARGO PFEIFF and JIM HUTCHISON, Pfeiff and Hutchison are free-lance writers and photographers living in Westmount, Canada.

Who could argue with a millennium of kudos? Throughout the ages, poets and travelers have praised the tiny jade green island of Miyajima, claiming it as one of the most beautiful places in all of Japan. To make it official a thousand years ago, the Japanese pinpointed the three most scenic spots in their country and christened them san kei , meaning "three views." Though most foreigners have never heard of them, they are legendary destinations to the Japanese.

Lt. Mike Castleton knows full well that in the grand scheme of things, his efforts to protect California's treasured wildlife are roughly equivalent to emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. California's 260 Department of Fish and Game wardens are charged with guarding more than 1,100 miles of coastline, 3,600 lakes, 1,200 reservoirs, 80 major rivers and 159,000 square miles of land.

In a town that prides itself on careful construction and uniform design, the narrow roads and mishmash of homes in the Sinaloa neighborhood are a Simi Valley planner's nightmare. Perched atop a grassy slope between the Sinaloa golf course and Sinaloa Road, the secluded hamlet houses decades-old dwellings in a rainbow of colors, from mud brown to fiery red to bright green. In Sinaloa, modest bungalows squat alongside rambling mini-mansions sprawled on large, sometimes overgrown lots.

Los Angeles Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents much of the Westside, proposed Tuesday that the Marina Freeway be given a new name: the Ballona Freeway. "Ballona Creek is an important natural resource in the Los Angeles urban environment," Bonin said in his resolution. "Renaming [the freeway] ... would allow people to connect the natural beauty around them with the name 'Ballona.'" A mere 1.5 miles or so long, the Marina Freeway is the shortest in L.A. County. It was envisioned as the Slauson Freeway, running through southern L.A. County and northern Orange County.

Chances are by now you've seen " Real Beauty Sketches ," a video released a few weeks ago by the Dove soap people. It documents a social experiment: Women describe themselves to a forensic sketch artist, who draws them from behind a curtain. Then the artist draws the same women based on descriptions from people who've only just met them. The accounts don't exactly line up. "My mom told me I had a big jaw" turns into "she was thin, so you could see her cheekbones. " "I kind of have a fat, rounder face" turns into "she had nice eyes.

HONG KONG -- What is beautiful? Four celebrated Asian filmmakers tackle the question in “Beautiful 2013,” a quartet of short films at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, which wraps up Tuesday. The Chinese video site Youku and the festival jointly commissioned the film following their initial collaboration last year, “Beautiful 2012.” That movie ended up touring to more than 20 film festivals and garnered more than 16 million hits...

Emma Watson will strip down to raise environmental awareness, even though she won't do it for the "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" star tweeted her support for James Houston's book of celebrities posing nude to raise environmental awareness. The book's proceeds will go to Global Green USA, a nonprofit focused on sustainability. PHOTOS: Hermione Granger through the years "My friend is supporting GlobalGreenUSA with his book Natural Beauty.

Re "Edge may get his Malibu mansions," June 16 Money is power for better or worse, and U2 guitarist the Edge has the money to build his dream house - or rather, five houses - coastal protections be damned. His lobbyists are pushing legislation to undermine the California Coastal Act while denying it has any connection to the Edge, although it happens to mirror his lawsuit against the Coastal Commission. Contrast this with how his bandmate, Bono, has used his money to help the world's downtrodden, earning him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The gig : Mike Evans is the founder of Tree of Life Nursery near San Juan Capistrano, California's largest seller of native plants. Over 30 years, he and business partner Jeff Bohn have become mainstays for natural restoration and landscaping projects. They welcome retail customers as well as a core clientele of commercial landscapers to the cluster of straw-bale offices and barns on historic Rancho Mission Viejo. California native: Evans, 57, was born in Arcadia, raised in Newport Beach and has lived in San Juan Capistrano for 32 years.

Like the floods that poured over fortified dams on the Mississippi this summer, nature demanded respect again Wednesday as wind-whipped flames roared through Laguna Canyon, making human efforts seem minuscule. Ironically, the area's natural beauty contributed to its demise. Frustrated firefighters who watched the blaze tear into a quiet suburban neighborhood said the steep, sloping hillsides and rocky ridgelines made it difficult for fire equipment to easily access the blaze.

Mansions are going up in Goma. This is a surprise. After all, property in Goma, a center of Congo's murderous and only theoretically concluded civil war, suffers from what real estate agents often refer to delicately as certain "negatives." Goma has been a victim of serial pillaging, occupation by larcenous rebels, and terrorism by the homicidal thugs who carried out the Rwandan genocide.

February 13, 2011 | By Dan Blackburn, Special to the Los Angeles Times

In the summer, the sun in Death Valley shows no mercy, pushing the mercury over the 115-degree mark, sucking every drop of moisture from the earth and air. It is a cruel dictator. Winter then stages a coup. Daytime highs average in the 80s, nighttime lows in the 30s. Life returns to the 3-million-acre national park, and visitors will find a flourishing golf course, horseback rides, Jeep rentals, hiking, swimming pools and the historic and highly regarded 1930s-style Furnace Creek Inn. As an added prize, the 5,270 square miles of Death Valley serve up some amazing sunrises and sunsets in winter.

Even when you tell people where Tioman Island is — that it's a patch of jungle off the east coast of peninsular Malaysia — you'll still get no glimmer of comprehension. Fine with me, because that makes Tioman everything I want in a castaway island, especially when seen from the perspective of a chilly Southern California winter's day. I came here while traveling around Southeast Asia in October because I wanted to crash on a beach for a few days without spending a fortune.